Temporary consult contracts, subcontractors, wildly ranging salaries for 250 people not counting the freelancers like voice actors, the game engine license, deals with distributors and big and expensive marketing campaigns (TV, Radio, Internet, print) and a lot of unforseen costs for development hurdles during the usually very difficult MMO design, playtesters and QA, setting up server farms, making contracts and deals with foreign companies to oversee their own servers in their countries, foreign retail and all that infrastructure you need to have in place in order to launch a global MMO, translators for the foreign versions of the game, taxes on all the things ever, musical orchestras and composers for the soundtrack, events and launch parties. Before you know it you're 50 million deep in the hole and still have 2 years left in development.
Yes well, 50 million is about 150 million short of our goal here.
If the breaking cost is voice actors? I mean fuck it, wow doesn't have voice actors for most of its content.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
Hah I seem to recall Metzen doing all the voices was partly because the SAG had insane regulations about who and how to do voiceover work with real legitimate actors. To the point where Blizzard threw their hands up and told them to go pound sand and just used employee's voices.
I do seem to recall games like WC3 they projected needing to double their budget just for voice work, but I could be misremembering here.
Still! Even if we tack that 50 million onto our numbers, that's still a huge discrepancy. I've already accounted for pretty much all of those "50 million" dollar costs. Even going by wow's server requirements, we barely hit those numbers. And a game like TESO isn't going to hit wow's numbers.
Has TESO even done any marketing, outside of things like PAX? I haven't seen anything. Looks like they're barely putting any money into that part. Flying people out to events is chump change compared to a national TV broadcast.
250 people is wow's number, too, like I said, a game like TESO shouldn't need those numbers. If they are... man. That is some shitty planning.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Well, in your previous post you said you're calculating for 4 years of development, but TESO has been in development since 2007.
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
Also they have been running a few banner ads here and there on MMO sites and general game sites. Mainly to advertise the beta.
Well, in your previous post you said you're calculating for 4 years of development, but TESO has been in development since 2007.
Again, drops in the bucket when you're 150+ million off from your mark. Even if you quadrupled my conservative estimates you are still a huge amount short.
7 year development cycle for an MMO is insane. That's borderline Duke Nukem.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
Well, in your previous post you said you're calculating for 4 years of development, but TESO has been in development since 2007.
Again, drops in the bucket when you're 150+ million off from your mark. Even if you quadrupled my conservative estimates you are still a huge amount short.
7 year development cycle for an MMO is insane. That's borderline Duke Nukem.
Certainly explains some of the design decisions or lack of coherence thereof.
Let's not quibble over the numbers. The overall point is pretty solid. Is the cost of using professional voice actors worth it?
One, is voice acting every single line something people really care about and quit MMOs if it's not there?
And two, how many people actually care about and recognize "voice actors", versus just a generic dude reading text? When I was playing TOR, did I think it was cool when someone told be the Female Trooper was Femshep? Yeah. Would I have noticed otherwise? Probably not? Did I really think her voice acting made the experience, versus another no-name actor? Probably not. I imagine if you sent out an email asking for the name of one voice actor from TOR, 99% of people who played TOR couldn't name one.
Did I stop playing TOR after two months because of voice acting? Fucking last thing on my list. Heck, by the time I got deeper into the game, I had subtitles on and was spacebarring through most of the non-story quest voice acting anyway. I don't need to listen to someone passionately explain to me how critical it is that these 5 Bantha asses be delivered to the next spacedock for 5 minutes. I don't care if James Earl Jones is delivering the lines, I just want to get laser off some Bantha ass and get to the next level.
Just checked wow too, 4 years barely into 5. I guess TESO needs to catch up to about 10 years of post-game dev though? Hm, I guess I could grant them a reprieve, but it's not like they're implementing vanilla wow stuff too, that methodology should have died (looks like they kept some of it?).
Seriously man, all I want is to use steam to invite my friends to come slay some dragons, that's it. Shit. Use steam's cloud storage even.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
I'm someone who likes having well voice acted games and in terms of MMOs found the experience of having quest objectives and story stuff told to me in SWTOR rather then having to read about all of it to be both refreshing and engaging.
Is it worth the price paid for it now? No. Should we find a way to make it more cost effective but doable? Yes. It's valuable for many people in and of itself, and can be helpful for others who don't want to read all that shit or need to be engaged more directly.
TESO probably doesn't need a lot of the VA work that went into it, but for a proper ES game, more VA is good, and they were probably trying to cater to that and went overboard between all the other things that probably went wrong/got phoned in.
And two, how many people actually care about and recognize "voice actors", versus just a generic dude reading text? When I was playing TOR, did I think it was cool when someone told be the Female Trooper was Femshep? Yeah. Would I have noticed otherwise? Probably not? Did I really think her voice acting made the experience, versus another no-name actor? Probably not. I imagine if you sent out an email asking for the name of one voice actor from TOR, 99% of people who played TOR couldn't name one.
Having Lassie voice my first [Trooper] companion is still one of the highlights of TOR for me.
I think I mentioned this in here earlier but several of my friends were in the beta. A few of them plan on buying it. Maybe four or five. But I will bet however much money you would like not a single one will play past two months, maybe not even past the first. Especially with the second round of next gen games being released near that same time. Haha wow I just checked the March and April release windows and what in the fuck are they thinking? Yeah April is a barren wasteland but holy shit. Dark Souls 2 (I am sure there is some overlap there between fan bases), Titanfall, Infamous, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy. Why on earth did they pick a release date so close to these games?
Same reason as always, I'd assume... Once you get passed half a dozen years of development, somebody, somewhere wants to start seeing some semblance of a return.
The voice acting in TOR does enhance the experience to a point. PCs and companions and important npcs, yeah. But for every random quest giver it's less engaging. Especially as you go on through the game and start to notice how many of the quest givers are speaking huttese or rodian (ie: alien gibberish) to cut down on costs.
The voice acting in TOR does enhance the experience to a point. PCs and companions and important npcs, yeah. But for every random quest giver it's less engaging. Especially as you go on through the game and start to notice how many of the quest givers are speaking huttese or rodian (ie: alien gibberish) to cut down on costs.
Or use the same voice actor.
I'm looking at you skyrim.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
The voice acting in TOR does enhance the experience to a point. PCs and companions and important npcs, yeah. But for every random quest giver it's less engaging. Especially as you go on through the game and start to notice how many of the quest givers are speaking huttese or rodian (ie: alien gibberish) to cut down on costs.
One language cue for Gormak, one language cue for Rakata, one language cue for Gree, one language cue for sullustens, etc. A few clicks and beeps for some droids, A LOT of Huttese for a whole bunch of races and people, both male and female, a few lines each. That about sums up the majority of the alienspeak factor in TOR, which is probably about 35-40% of all VA in TOR.
I think I mentioned this in here earlier but several of my friends were in the beta. A few of them plan on buying it. Maybe four or five. But I will bet however much money you would like not a single one will play past two months, maybe not even past the first.
It will be a good 1-2 month distraction while continuing the wait for Wildstar.
Maybe it's just me, but I'm a little baffled as to why they don't run one of their beta weekends with every making level 10 dudes so the PvP gets A. more testing and B. assuming it's cool, more buzz (regardless of NDAs, obviously people talk). I feel like I'm constantly hearing "but the PvP!" from those that are still excited about this, but short of "Well, they've got guys that made other cool PvP stuff in older MMOs!", I haven't seen anything to suggest this won't be another iteration of zerg-based PvP where the side with the most dudes, or the side with the best gear, wins every time.
PvP that relies on balancing a spreadsheet is almost always going to be shit.
There's a reason people really dig FPS and not MMOs for competitions. Other than people who play league of legends or something, I can't decide if they're masochists or what.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
The problem with a lot of MMO open-world PvP is that developers are still in the mindset of punishing people for dying, instead of rewarding people for fighting.
If you look at the set up of any great FPS game, the game is designed to reward people for engaging and fighting, as well as making it relatively quick and easy to get back to the fight.
It's why zerg/herd mentalities develop in MMO PvP. It's why people stay hidden behind walls, play world vs door and otherwise avoiding fighting.
If you want Open World PvP to thrive, you need to reward people for fighting. I'd take a page out of Planetside 1's book, and have Hot Zones develop where there's fighting, and around major objectives. Inside each Hot Zone, there's an intensity meter that's some sort of measure of how fierce the fighting is. Maybe it's simply an overall measure of total kills/per unit of time. The higher the intensity, the better the rewards for EVERYONE involved. Maybe you add a multiplier based on factors like personal kills, damage done, healing done, etc, but the idea is that players are rewarded with loot, money and prizes every 5 minutes they're involved in a Hot Zone battle, times their personal performance multiplier.
You also make it relatively quick and easy to get back to the fight when you die, and you don't punish people with a death penalty. You can add objectives to each zone that essentially shut down the other side (like finally capturing a base's control center or a tower respawn point) so that there is a local "victory condition".
You can still have experience and rewards handed out on a per kill basis, but you make the Smash TV style rewards abundant via participating in Hot Zone battles.
But again, the focus is on having players fight, not play world vs door, or capturing empty objectives for some meaningless amount of points that no one really cares about in the end.
That all sounds great...maybe they're doing all that and it's a special surprise? My main issue with PvP in MMOs (aside from the stuff you already brought up) is gear disparity. I have no problem with one class or another having this or that advantage, but letting player gear dictate success on any level in PvP is just dumb.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
PvP that relies on balancing a spreadsheet is almost always going to be shit.
There's a reason people really dig FPS and not MMOs for competitions. Other than people who play league of legends or something, I can't decide if they're masochists or what.
People like fairness (or perception of fairness). And people like to level up and get more powerful.
That's the core of the MOBA genre's popularity. You all start the match at level 1, with a pre-set amount of gold, and as you fight on you gain new levels, you learn new skills and upgrade old ones, and you get amazing items that make you stronger. It's like the MMO leveling/raiding treadmill condensed into a 20-60 minute PvP match.
The problem with a lot of MMO open-world PvP is that developers are still in the mindset of punishing people for dying, instead of rewarding people for fighting.
If you look at the set up of any great FPS game, the game is designed to reward people for engaging and fighting, as well as making it relatively quick and easy to get back to the fight.
It's why zerg/herd mentalities develop in MMO PvP. It's why people stay hidden behind walls, play world vs door and otherwise avoiding fighting.
If you want Open World PvP to thrive, you need to reward people for fighting. I'd take a page out of Planetside 1's book, and have Hot Zones develop where there's fighting, and around major objectives. Inside each Hot Zone, there's an intensity meter that's some sort of measure of how fierce the fighting is. Maybe it's simply an overall measure of total kills/per unit of time. The higher the intensity, the better the rewards for EVERYONE involved. Maybe you add a multiplier based on factors like personal kills, damage done, healing done, etc, but the idea is that players are rewarded with loot, money and prizes every 5 minutes they're involved in a Hot Zone battle, times their personal performance multiplier.
You also make it relatively quick and easy to get back to the fight when you die, and you don't punish people with a death penalty. You can add objectives to each zone that essentially shut down the other side (like finally capturing a base's control center or a tower respawn point) so that there is a local "victory condition".
You can still have experience and rewards handed out on a per kill basis, but you make the Smash TV style rewards abundant via participating in Hot Zone battles.
But again, the focus is on having players fight, not play world vs door, or capturing empty objectives for some meaningless amount of points that no one really cares about in the end.
I really like this idea.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
If I was in the beta, it'll be instructive to see how much progress they made from the previous beta I may or may not have been it
I doubt they'll have fixed the structural flaws in the game design, but if they have any hope of not flopping in the first few weeks (as opposed to 6 months later), their proposed list of improvements at the end of the last beta better be mostly checked off. Cause there's other things to work on as well.
Edit - or, hypothetically, read the patch notes...
The problem with a lot of MMO open-world PvP is that developers are still in the mindset of punishing people for dying, instead of rewarding people for fighting.
If you look at the set up of any great FPS game, the game is designed to reward people for engaging and fighting, as well as making it relatively quick and easy to get back to the fight.
It's why zerg/herd mentalities develop in MMO PvP. It's why people stay hidden behind walls, play world vs door and otherwise avoiding fighting.
If you want Open World PvP to thrive, you need to reward people for fighting. I'd take a page out of Planetside 1's book, and have Hot Zones develop where there's fighting, and around major objectives. Inside each Hot Zone, there's an intensity meter that's some sort of measure of how fierce the fighting is. Maybe it's simply an overall measure of total kills/per unit of time. The higher the intensity, the better the rewards for EVERYONE involved. Maybe you add a multiplier based on factors like personal kills, damage done, healing done, etc, but the idea is that players are rewarded with loot, money and prizes every 5 minutes they're involved in a Hot Zone battle, times their personal performance multiplier.
You also make it relatively quick and easy to get back to the fight when you die, and you don't punish people with a death penalty. You can add objectives to each zone that essentially shut down the other side (like finally capturing a base's control center or a tower respawn point) so that there is a local "victory condition".
You can still have experience and rewards handed out on a per kill basis, but you make the Smash TV style rewards abundant via participating in Hot Zone battles.
But again, the focus is on having players fight, not play world vs door, or capturing empty objectives for some meaningless amount of points that no one really cares about in the end.
So you want everybody to be playing a deathmatch to get loot, money, and prizes, and have that continue endlessly until some jackass just ignores the whole thing and presses the "end the game" button?
It seems really odd to me that you are simultaneously saying that objective-based games are fucked and stupid and dumb, and that there need to be objectives to control. Those are kind of literally exact opposites.
Is he saying objectives are dumb? All I saw was the idea that capturing *empty* objectives is dumb, and I agree. IMO, a game with big open world PvP needs to have lasting consequences for the world/environment, and short term rewards for the players. I do like the idea of this "emperor" thing they recently announced, though I'm not sure I like the idea of devoting resources to a skill line 1% (or less) of players will ever see.
It's kind of hard to reconcile "don't punish players for dying" with killing people actually having an effect. The easier it is to get back quickly the less consequential and more zergy combat becomes. And while zerg clashing with zerg is fun for a short while it's not enough to carry a game.
It depends on what the penalties are. There are personal penalties like armor damage/xp loss/etc, and there are team penalties like having to respawn further back from the fight, thus making the death count on a strategic level rather than a personal level.
From what ZOS has said publically, they may be trying more of the team/faction based penalty. The warcamps you can put up in Cyrodiil will have a limited total number of respawns that can occur. So eventually your reinforcement/respawn chain runs out and you'll have to take a longer route to return to a fight.
But if ZOS is not planning at least one beta before release that's just "everyone is level 50, kill each other in the war zone" I'll be worried about how well they've setup their world pvp.
Open world PVP needs varied objectives and a HUUUUUGE map. That's why GW2's RvR was only fun for a while, because the zerg can respond WAY to quick to just about anything on the map.
Make the map big enough and with enough varied objectives, then the zerg would be stupid to spend all that time going for smaller stuff. Also objectives need a good point and guild/pvp rank needs to be integrated into that. Such as the ability to build "guild camps" or something that provide spawn points or various siege capabilities.
It seems like a common thing nowdays with MMOs, that the first thing people do is pick apart what they think is terrible and gamebreaking then preach about how horrible of a flop the game will be. I'm different I guess, because I pick up and MMO and pick out what is fun and what I might enjoy doing for a few months. So far they have caught my attention with a LARGE pvp area and castles/keeps that don't auto-flip when captured. Plus the previews seem to show huge battles are possible with the game engine.... and as most of us saw it as negative, when you play the beta there are literally a hundred people standing on one of the first quest NPCs while the game engine seems to do just fine without any "culling" or what not. So there is a potential and I'd like to give a go. If it turns out to really be the anti-christ that kills my first born like most are saying around here, then oh well.
For those who are just talking about it not being a real "elder scrolls" experience and the immersion is broken in MMO format... well ya, your princess is in another castle on that one. Its just personally I wont let that stop me from finding the other fun shit in the game.
It depends on what the penalties are. There are personal penalties like armor damage/xp loss/etc, and there are team penalties like having to respawn further back from the fight, thus making the death count on a strategic level rather than a personal level.
From what ZOS has said publically, they may be trying more of the team/faction based penalty. The warcamps you can put up in Cyrodiil will have a limited total number of respawns that can occur. So eventually your reinforcement/respawn chain runs out and you'll have to take a longer route to return to a fight.
But if ZOS is not planning at least one beta before release that's just "everyone is level 50, kill each other in the war zone" I'll be worried about how well they've setup their world pvp.
I don't know. I think that the higher penalties for dying, the more people zergball. Gambling on doing something other than, "Hide in the mass of players that are zerg balling" becomes less appealing a prospect when your other option is to break off from the group, spend five minutes searching for combat, then die and waste all the time coming back."
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Yes well, 50 million is about 150 million short of our goal here.
If the breaking cost is voice actors? I mean fuck it, wow doesn't have voice actors for most of its content.
I do seem to recall games like WC3 they projected needing to double their budget just for voice work, but I could be misremembering here.
Still! Even if we tack that 50 million onto our numbers, that's still a huge discrepancy. I've already accounted for pretty much all of those "50 million" dollar costs. Even going by wow's server requirements, we barely hit those numbers. And a game like TESO isn't going to hit wow's numbers.
Has TESO even done any marketing, outside of things like PAX? I haven't seen anything. Looks like they're barely putting any money into that part. Flying people out to events is chump change compared to a national TV broadcast.
250 people is wow's number, too, like I said, a game like TESO shouldn't need those numbers. If they are... man. That is some shitty planning.
Again, drops in the bucket when you're 150+ million off from your mark. Even if you quadrupled my conservative estimates you are still a huge amount short.
7 year development cycle for an MMO is insane. That's borderline Duke Nukem.
Certainly explains some of the design decisions or lack of coherence thereof.
One, is voice acting every single line something people really care about and quit MMOs if it's not there?
And two, how many people actually care about and recognize "voice actors", versus just a generic dude reading text? When I was playing TOR, did I think it was cool when someone told be the Female Trooper was Femshep? Yeah. Would I have noticed otherwise? Probably not? Did I really think her voice acting made the experience, versus another no-name actor? Probably not. I imagine if you sent out an email asking for the name of one voice actor from TOR, 99% of people who played TOR couldn't name one.
Did I stop playing TOR after two months because of voice acting? Fucking last thing on my list. Heck, by the time I got deeper into the game, I had subtitles on and was spacebarring through most of the non-story quest voice acting anyway. I don't need to listen to someone passionately explain to me how critical it is that these 5 Bantha asses be delivered to the next spacedock for 5 minutes. I don't care if James Earl Jones is delivering the lines, I just want to get laser off some Bantha ass and get to the next level.
Seriously man, all I want is to use steam to invite my friends to come slay some dragons, that's it. Shit. Use steam's cloud storage even.
Is it worth the price paid for it now? No. Should we find a way to make it more cost effective but doable? Yes. It's valuable for many people in and of itself, and can be helpful for others who don't want to read all that shit or need to be engaged more directly.
TESO probably doesn't need a lot of the VA work that went into it, but for a proper ES game, more VA is good, and they were probably trying to cater to that and went overboard between all the other things that probably went wrong/got phoned in.
Having Lassie voice my first [Trooper] companion is still one of the highlights of TOR for me.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
PSN:Furlion
Or use the same voice actor.
I'm looking at you skyrim.
One language cue for Gormak, one language cue for Rakata, one language cue for Gree, one language cue for sullustens, etc. A few clicks and beeps for some droids, A LOT of Huttese for a whole bunch of races and people, both male and female, a few lines each. That about sums up the majority of the alienspeak factor in TOR, which is probably about 35-40% of all VA in TOR.
It will be a good 1-2 month distraction while continuing the wait for Wildstar.
There's a reason people really dig FPS and not MMOs for competitions. Other than people who play league of legends or something, I can't decide if they're masochists or what.
If you look at the set up of any great FPS game, the game is designed to reward people for engaging and fighting, as well as making it relatively quick and easy to get back to the fight.
It's why zerg/herd mentalities develop in MMO PvP. It's why people stay hidden behind walls, play world vs door and otherwise avoiding fighting.
If you want Open World PvP to thrive, you need to reward people for fighting. I'd take a page out of Planetside 1's book, and have Hot Zones develop where there's fighting, and around major objectives. Inside each Hot Zone, there's an intensity meter that's some sort of measure of how fierce the fighting is. Maybe it's simply an overall measure of total kills/per unit of time. The higher the intensity, the better the rewards for EVERYONE involved. Maybe you add a multiplier based on factors like personal kills, damage done, healing done, etc, but the idea is that players are rewarded with loot, money and prizes every 5 minutes they're involved in a Hot Zone battle, times their personal performance multiplier.
You also make it relatively quick and easy to get back to the fight when you die, and you don't punish people with a death penalty. You can add objectives to each zone that essentially shut down the other side (like finally capturing a base's control center or a tower respawn point) so that there is a local "victory condition".
You can still have experience and rewards handed out on a per kill basis, but you make the Smash TV style rewards abundant via participating in Hot Zone battles.
But again, the focus is on having players fight, not play world vs door, or capturing empty objectives for some meaningless amount of points that no one really cares about in the end.
People like fairness (or perception of fairness). And people like to level up and get more powerful.
That's the core of the MOBA genre's popularity. You all start the match at level 1, with a pre-set amount of gold, and as you fight on you gain new levels, you learn new skills and upgrade old ones, and you get amazing items that make you stronger. It's like the MMO leveling/raiding treadmill condensed into a 20-60 minute PvP match.
I really like this idea.
http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/news/post/2014/01/07/new-beta-invites--january-7th
I got an invite - downloading the client now at 6 mb/s. I'll leave it running overnight, ready for the weekend.
I'm hoping its fun, but I'm not terribly excited or anything.
Fingers crossed, as I'd like it to succeed.
Ps4 : Gigawatt666
Steam I.D. : Gigawatt666
LoL : GiG4W4TT
I doubt they'll have fixed the structural flaws in the game design, but if they have any hope of not flopping in the first few weeks (as opposed to 6 months later), their proposed list of improvements at the end of the last beta better be mostly checked off. Cause there's other things to work on as well.
Edit - or, hypothetically, read the patch notes...
So you want everybody to be playing a deathmatch to get loot, money, and prizes, and have that continue endlessly until some jackass just ignores the whole thing and presses the "end the game" button?
It seems really odd to me that you are simultaneously saying that objective-based games are fucked and stupid and dumb, and that there need to be objectives to control. Those are kind of literally exact opposites.
From what ZOS has said publically, they may be trying more of the team/faction based penalty. The warcamps you can put up in Cyrodiil will have a limited total number of respawns that can occur. So eventually your reinforcement/respawn chain runs out and you'll have to take a longer route to return to a fight.
But if ZOS is not planning at least one beta before release that's just "everyone is level 50, kill each other in the war zone" I'll be worried about how well they've setup their world pvp.
Make the map big enough and with enough varied objectives, then the zerg would be stupid to spend all that time going for smaller stuff. Also objectives need a good point and guild/pvp rank needs to be integrated into that. Such as the ability to build "guild camps" or something that provide spawn points or various siege capabilities.
It seems like a common thing nowdays with MMOs, that the first thing people do is pick apart what they think is terrible and gamebreaking then preach about how horrible of a flop the game will be. I'm different I guess, because I pick up and MMO and pick out what is fun and what I might enjoy doing for a few months. So far they have caught my attention with a LARGE pvp area and castles/keeps that don't auto-flip when captured. Plus the previews seem to show huge battles are possible with the game engine.... and as most of us saw it as negative, when you play the beta there are literally a hundred people standing on one of the first quest NPCs while the game engine seems to do just fine without any "culling" or what not. So there is a potential and I'd like to give a go. If it turns out to really be the anti-christ that kills my first born like most are saying around here, then oh well.
For those who are just talking about it not being a real "elder scrolls" experience and the immersion is broken in MMO format... well ya, your princess is in another castle on that one. Its just personally I wont let that stop me from finding the other fun shit in the game.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don't know. I think that the higher penalties for dying, the more people zergball. Gambling on doing something other than, "Hide in the mass of players that are zerg balling" becomes less appealing a prospect when your other option is to break off from the group, spend five minutes searching for combat, then die and waste all the time coming back."